Here are a few shots of the intrepid crew that circumnavigated Manhattan on Saturday, it was a long haul and backtracking was anathema . . . so when a macadam bike path in Inwood Park turned into a weedy foot trail and then finally petered out, there was no way we were turning back-- we had to get south to Fort Washington Park-- right under the George Washington Bridge (pic below) and there was a hole in the fence that led to the train tracks, so we ducked under and walked the tracks, hobo style, until we could finally duck back into the forest . . . we made it down without having to evade a train and we didn't run into any local police, but next time I suppose we won't try to stick so close to the shore of the Hudson River.
I just got home from a 20+ mile hike from the top of Manhattan (207th St) down the western side of the island to Battery Park . . . epic and scenic and my feet hurt.
One of my student's Twitter account went viral this week with this quick clip of a girl taking off her fake-eyelashes at prom (to her date's surprise) and the video became so popular so quickly that NBC phone-interviewed her about how it feels to ride the fifteen-minute wave of exponential internet popularity . . . while this couldn't have happened to a nicer girl, I would like to point out that I teach this student in Shakespeare class, and that Shakespeare's complex, character-driven five act masterpieces of comedy, history and tragedy-- which may be the ultimate expression of human emotion and motivation in dramatic form-- are probably a better indicator of the artistic capabilities of humankind than a 4 second clip shot on a cell-phone at prom on a whim . . . but you can't argue with the internet.
This morning I pulled into the high school parking lot, got out of the car and went around to the passenger side, opened the door and grabbed my lunch cooler, and then noticed that I did a terrible job parking the van-- not only was I too far over on the right side of the spot, my wheels on the painted line, but I also hadn't pulled all the way in, so my rear bumper was sticking way out into the lot . . . normally, I look at a parking job like this and think to myself Wow, I'm awful at parking and then blithely head into the building, but I'm proud to say today was different-- I got back into my car and revised my parking-- and this time I did it right-- and if that's not the height of civilization, I don't know what is.
I got my seniors amped up for graduation today by reading them an excerpt from Carlo Rovelli's The Order of Time-- a book connects perfectly to both Hamlet and their own lives, as it points out that though we want the universe to be comprised of things on an orderly timeline, it is actually composed of relativistic occurrences and events, in constant fluctuation and change . . . a war is not a thing, it's a long sequence of events; a cloud is not a thing, it's a bunch of condensation in the air; even things are not things, they are only semi-permanent perturbations of quantum forces, and-- of course-- a person is not a thing, though we are under the illusion that we are a character, an entity, a static personality but we are actually a sequences of events and circumstances with some distorted memories that connect us to the past events that were experienced by a few of our molecules (but not most of them, as they are constantly regenerating) and so while Hamlet starts the play with the ultimate ambition: "The time is out of joint, O cursed spite that I was ever born to set it right" he ends the play realizing that "we defy augury" and that there is no sorting out time and the universe, because-- as Rovelli explains-- the time is always out of joint-- time is different in every location and just a construct designed to give us some idea of the constant flux and change in the universe . . . Hamlet know this by the end of the play when he says "If it be now, tis not to come; if it be not to come, it will be now; if it be not now, yet it will come: the readiness is all" and that is the attitude the seniors must adopt, high school is over, all is change, flexibility is paramount, and "the readiness is all."
It's bad enough that Ian purchased and ate Gummy Lifesavers (he has braces and was explicitly told never to eat anything gummy) but the sillier part of his dental transgression is that he left the receipt for the gummies in his book-bag, so that my wife could discover it (when I asked him why he kept the receipt he claimed he didn't want to be a litterbug).
I thought I broke our new dog Lola because I walked her too long the other morning-- she developed a bit of a limp-- but then we noticed the limp came and went without good reason, and she allowed me to touch every part of her right leg and there was nothing tender or injured . . . and then when she was playing with our friend's dog Sniffer, the limp disappeared, and today she was leaping with all four feet in the air onto a squeaky toy and "killing it . . . and then I learned that apparently dogs are smart enough to "fake limp" when they are nervous and want attention and sympathy and once they settle in and gain confidence, they stop.
My wife is growing her hair long because she says she needs to do it before she turns fifty . . . according to her, women over fifty usually don't wear their hair long (I didn't know this was a rule, but now that I think about it, it seems to hold true) and the boys and I were playing HORSE in my cousin's driveway this afternoon at a christening and I took an easy shot and my son Alex said if you take a shot so easy that everyone makes it, then the original shooter gets a letter-- I've never heard of this rule either, but it strikes me as an excellent addition, because HORSE can get rather slow and boring, and this speeds things up a bit (unless people take shots so difficult that no one can make them, including the shooter . . . but that's entertaining in it's own right).
I highly recommend The Indicator, a very short podcast that tells compelling economic stories, and this recent episode (Internet a la Carte) about a white paper (Using Massive Online Choice Experiments to Measure Changes in Well-being) that attempts to measure how people value free services on the internet is typical of the show-- it's a fascinating premise: asking people how much they would pay yearly not use a particular internet service and using this data to value the services-- but it also seems that the numbers are somehow skewed; Cardiff Garcia and Stacey Vanek Smith discuss this for a moment, but then the rest of the thinking is up to you . . . there is definitely something weird about the median values and how much time people spend on each service . . . it seems as if social media is undervalued, especially since the companies that provide these services are worth so much money, but perhaps social media is just a guilty pleasure and could easily be replaced by disco dancing, roller-blading, duck-pin bowling, gin, or latch-hook . . . anyway, these are the numbers-- they are strange but interesting, especially since if you paid for all of these services, you'd be out quite a bit of cash:
We are settling in to the reality of having a puppy in the house . . . she raced outside this morning to do her business and I went to pick it up with a plastic bag but when I grabbed the poop, despite wearing a bag on my hand, it felt a bit more moist and visceral than I remembered . . . and then I realized the bag had a hole in it and I had reached through the hole and grabbed the poop with my bare hand . . . yuck . . . then Catherine came home at lunch to more poop on the rug and some chewing of our kitchen stool . .. but Lola has already learned to sit and come and she's walking on the leash fairly well, so she's moving along (and I got up at 5 AM this morning to walk her and train her and then got a late start to work and totally forgot that I promised to drive a colleague who lives in my town and has a car in the shop; I was so focused on puppy training that I didn't remember that I was supposed to pick him up until I pulled into the school lot-- I called him to apologize and he told me he grabbed an Uber . . . but I did remember to drive him home, so I did him exactly 50% of the promised favor: which is still failing).
I think it's a crying shame that we folks on the East Coast have to stay up so late to watch the NBA play-offs . . . the league is losing out on loads of potential fans (because they never see the end of any of the games . . . or at least my kids don't, they can't function on a school day with that kind of sleep deprivation) and the league hasn't scheduled a single day game for the entire finals, they should at least put the potential (and probably improbable) game seven in Super Bowl like time slot.
We adopted a dog today from the APAWS Shelter in West Windsor; Lola is part Rhodesian Ridgeback, part who knows what, and entirely sweet and cute-- she's a bit overwhelmed to be out of the shelter but hopefully she'll settle in quickly . . . and it's nice to have a dog in the house again.
My buddy and fellow English teacher Bob (the leader sing and bassist extraordinaire of the Faculty Follies band) wrote the first few stanzas of "EB Cafeteria," to the tune of "Hotel California" and I added a couple of mundane verses at the end, but then I had a brilliant idea and found the seed of a narrative within the subtext of the song-- I was worried Bob wouldn't be into me taking his masterpiece down this road, but as usual, he was willing and ready to sing anything, no matter how gross and absurd (and at the end of the song, I got to improvise a guitar solo-- which was a little scary in front of such a huge crowd, but everything ended right in time-- lyrics below, you'll be able to tell which verses I am responsible for.)
EB Cafeteria
Down a walkway in D-hall
Fluorescent light in my hair
Warm smell of fajitas, rising up through the air
Up ahead, in the distance, the doors, opened wide
Make sure you have a late pass, if you want to get inside
Better get through the doorway
Before the second bell
Wait in line for some fixins
To fill your Taco bowl shell
Lunch lady grabs a ladle, And she scoops you some lunch
Wait, it’s 10:38, so I guess it's more like a brunch
Welcome to the EB cafeteria
Such an open space, you can stuff your face
Plenty to eat at the EB cafeteria
A potluck surprise, would you like some fries?
TVs near the ceiling, a juice box on ice
We are all just prisoners here of our cellular device
Clean the crumbs off your table and get ready for the feast
you’re just about to take a bite,
when your friend decides to sneeze!
Your lunch is covered with mucous and a stray nose hair.
You’ve got nothing else to eat, it just isn’t fair.
For the Faculty Follies, the house band usually does all new song parodies, but I demanded we resuscitate one song: "PSAT" (which is done to the tune of "YMCA") because I wanted one moment to happen-- so Bob added some new lyrics, and I explained to our new band member Young Allie exactly what I needed from her . . . Bob would sing the lyrics, "PSAT/ it's fun to guess on the PSAT/ you can narrow the choices to one in three/ then choose a letter . . ." and then I wanted Allie to step to the microphone and complete the line with the phrase "May I suggest C!" and she nailed it, with perfect timing and enunciation, which made me incredibly happy (you can see this moment for yourself, if you go 40 seconds in but I need to find some better quality video, so you can see just how ecstatic I am that my plan came together).
Last night, I got as close to being a rock star as I ever will-- I played guitar in the Faculty Follies House Band in front of nearly a thousand screaming fans-- and at the start of "Detention" (played to the tune of Charlie Puth's "Attention") I exhibited a rare moment of aplomb and competence . . . I had twisted too many knobs on my amplifier and turned on too many effect pedals and the sound coming out of my speaker was an infinite sequence of echoes, but instead of forging ahead, I stopped playing, calmly clicked off my delay pedal with my foot, and then started again, with a much better sound . . . this is the only song that Bob and I didn't write-- the director of the event, Liz, penned this one and the lyrics are great so I've included them below.
Detention (To “Attention” by Charlie Puth)
You’ve been wanderin’, wanderin’, wanderin’, wanderin’ strolling through the halls . . .
And you knew you’d be, knew you’d be, knew you’d be late to class
Now your teacher’s mad, teacher’s mad, teacher’s mad, teacher’s mad - he’s writing you up
So you take the slip, tear it, and you throw it in the trash.
I know you’ve been in trouble, often before
Like that one time when you cut study hall
And now they’re all up on you, They’ve called your mom
But you act like you just don’t care at all...
You must want detention or maybe ISS?
Maybe you just hate the thought of reading Beowulf
You must want detention, because you’re here again
Don’t you come to this office enough?
You’ve been on your phone on your phone on your phone checking on your streaks
When your teacher told you to put it in your bag
You blew her off blew her off blew her off until she said she’d write you up
Then you threw a fit, made a scene and called her an old hag
I know Snapchat’s important And Instagram
But can’t you wait until it’s passing time?
Cause now they’re all up on you, calling your dad
Telling him that you just crossed the line.
You must want detention Or maybe ISS?
Maybe you just hate the thought of doing one more proof
You must want detention Cause you’re here again
So what the heck should we do with you?
You must want detention Or maybe ISS?
Maybe you just hate the thought of doing one more proof
Today was "Dress Like a Teacher Day" at East Brunswick High School, and two lovely young ladies abandoned all fashion sense and dressed like me-- slacks with 2% spandex, a golf shirt, funky sandals, and thick framed black glasses (and one lady went so far as to carry an identical coffee cup, a copy of Hamlet, and she painted on a mascara goatee) but though the costumes were cute and we took some funny photos together, the scary part was that the two of them could also emulate all my mannerisms, body language, and tone of voice-- they went upstairs and regaled the other English teachers with stories of Syria, my incorrigible son Ian, and students with no sense of personal space-- and did it with my particular manner and eloquence (or lack thereof).
The directions on the Colavita rigatoni are too ambiguous: "cook to desired tenderness," while the sign on the bathroom at Tacoria Mexican Kitchen in New Brunswick is way too specific: "El Bano; Where Tacos Go to Rest."
Last Friday I made a radical kitchen move that took twelve years to discover: I moved all of our mismatched tupperware-type plastic containers and lids from the lazy-susan corner cabinet (where they caused me undue stress and frustration because I had to bend over and spin the lazy-susan in order to find what I was looking for and I could never tell which tops matched which containers, a visual problem that no amount of practice could improve) to the big, deep, and easily accessible pots and pans drawer by the stove, and I put the pots and lids and colanders on the lazy-susan, where they are easy to see and grab and even my wife and children agreed that this radical change was brilliant, because now you get a comfortable, birds-eye view of the plastic containers, so you can size up the lids and match them to the proper container . . . and I will sadly concede that I might not have an idea this good for the rest of my days.
Here are a few shots of the intrepid crew that circumnavigated Manhattan on Saturday, it was a long haul and backtracking was anathema . . . so when a macadam bike path in Inwood Park turned into a weedy foot trail and then finally petered out, there was no way we were turning back-- we had to get south to Fort Washington Park-- right under the George Washington Bridge (pic below) and there was a hole in the fence that led to the train tracks, so we ducked under and walked the tracks, hobo style, until we could finally duck back into the forest . . . we made it down without having to evade a train and we didn't run into any local police, but next time I suppose we won't try to stick so close to the shore of the Hudson River.
an
